The Profitable Startup

Jonathan LeBlanc (@jcleblanc)Head of Developer Evangelism (North America)

PayPal | Developer

The Problem…

A Relentless Focus on User Growth

The Digital Revolution

Physical Costs

Price of GoodsStorageShippingReturns…

Digital vs. Physical Goods

Digital Costs

…a few bytes

The Problems with the Model

Chargebacks and fraud

Copyright owner concerns

Tracking buyers

Preventing Fraud: Tracking Buyers

Email domain type

User browsing & buying habitsManual review

Device Fingerprinting

IP to billing address location

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

More on Device Fingerprinting

Browser characteristic Bits of identifying information

1 in x browsers with same characterists

User Agent 12.01 4117.11Browser Plugin Detail 6.8 111.13Time Zone 21.6+ 3178409Screen Size / Color Depth 4.56 23.58System Fonts 21.6+ 3178409Cookies Enabled? 0.44 1.35Limited Supercookie Test 0.98 1.97

Mobile as a Primary Citizen

Working with the App Stores

Any product that can be purchased from the app store needs to be

Physical goods are ok – Use a WebView

Construct a wrapper the handle cross-device requests

Working with These Models

Responsive, cross-platform HTML5 web applications

Reduce the number of screens to checkout

Use knowledgeable identity systems

Data Reduction with Identity

Identity to Remove Complexities

Creating with a Crowd

Crowdfunding vs. Group Funding

Many people funding a single individual to perform an end action

Many people funding an end action

Why Crowdfunding is so Hard

Tracking money to its final source

Vetting project owners

Time to payment charge

Handling chargebacks

Very poor history of success

Group Funding Decisions

Short term vs. long term money holding

Direct payment to 1 person or auth /capture model?

Who is responsible for chargebacks / refunds?

Building on a Data Backbone

An Old Addage

"If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product"

Data Responsibility

Personalize, don’t abuse

Anonymizing the data sources

The Problems with the Model

Long time until the data becomes profitable

Narrow data focus area means limited uses

Using our Building Blocks

Optimists consider that up to a 30% of ecommerce sales increase is

thanks to cross-selling recommended products

fikobservatory

Personalized Recommendations

Changing Action to Intent

Traits of the BoredDistractionRepetitionTiredness

Reasons for BoredomLack of interestReadiness

Thank You!

Jonathan LeBlanc (@jcleblanc)Head of Developer Evangelism (North America)

PayPal | Developer